A patch for Gunslinger Quake 2 is now available for download. This release fixes many bugs, and completely replaces the old 1.1 patch, so you don't have to upgrade to v1.1 and then v1.2. Get the full details by clicking here. Gunslinger Quake 2 replaces the standard Quake 2 weapons with period pieces of the old west. Each weapon has two firing modes, and most only carry a small number of rounds before players have to reload.

The Coven's open source mod for Quake II, Napalm II, now has irix and BeOS ports thanks to Richard Hess at SGI. You can download the latest ports as well as the Linux, Solaris and Windows versions of the mod by clicking here. Napalm II is an open source mod for Quake II, adding secondary firing modes to all the standard weapons, giving you access to flamethrowers, fire storms, and incendiary bullets.

Pretty slow day for the Quake scene eh? Bomb asked me to put up some blurb for him since he's out bobbing for apples at a Halloween party. Unfortunately I seriously have no news to post, sorry :) Stay tuned though!

LadyICE, content manager over at PlanetQuake, has picked 10 Quake2 models that she thought was the scariest. Put a little funk into your Quake2 deathmatch this Halloween. Click here to view the Top 10.

Somehow this slipped past me in the mountain of e-mail I have. Carmack updated his .plan announcing the hiring of Robert Duffy, which will be a full time employee starting in December. Here's a clip:

An announcement:

We have hired Robert Duffy as a full time employee, starting in December.

He has been maintaining the level editor since the release of Q2, but a number of things have convinced me it is time to have a full time tool-guy at id.

The original QE4 editor was my very first ever Win32 program, and while Robert has done a good job of keeping it on life support through necessary extensions and evolutions, it really is past its designated lifespan.

As usual, Carmack included other tidbits in his .plan along with the announcement. Click here to read the .plan in its entirety.

Three Clicks to a Kill is an article on Incite Games about Quake III: Arena. It has many quotes from id employees and gives an overview of the game. The article sports several screenshots, one of which is believed to be new. Thanks to sCary for sending this in.

A new version of the QuakeWorld server launcher has been released. This version is capable of starting over 45 servers in seconds. The new version fixes a number of bugs and adds support for Rocket Arena, Requiem, and Lithium. Click here to download.

Incite Games has posted a clip of an interview with id Software's John Carmack. The interview goes into detail about the difficulties encountered making Quake III: Arena and more. Click here to check it out.

PingTool 2.6 Beta 1 is now available for download. The new release features support for additional games, bug fixes, and enhancements. There is now a Swedish version available. Click here for complete details about the new release.

As you might've guessed I'm kinda phasing myself out of posting the news... I've got a lot of other things going on so I figured it's best if I try and lighten my work-load a bit (if you can call it "work" ;). I'll be working on more "behind the scenes" stuff here as I won't be posting news much anymore, but Bomb has graciously decided to help be the interim poster until I get around to finding someone new.

In related news, our menus now work again! We've had several people send in helpful chunks of code here and there, and we finally found one we liked, and played around with it a bit more. For those who don't like the popup menus, you'll notice we've also added a table to the left here with the menu contents as well. Got comments?

Riding the Rocket has announced the release of Tricks Arena - The Edge. Tricks Arena - The Edge is a recammed demo complete with soundtrack
featuring many non-weapon trickjumps on q2dm1. This demo is great for beginners and advanced players alike!

Mike Carlyle from LoToH Software informed me about some changes that happened within the LoToH Software team. A few changes include the cancellation of an alliance between LoToH and The Mental Vortex, as well as the hiring of new people for LoToH Software. Click here for full details.

PlanetQuake has posted an interview they conducted with Paul Steed, id Software's modeler. The interview was conducted during a stop of the Quake III bus. The interview includes photos and screenshots. Click here to check it out!

'S.A.S's Guide to CTF', and his guide to 'Tribes' has moved to http://www.barrysworld.com/guides/.
The new address is also the home of the newly opened Barrysworld Guides which is interested in hearing from gamers who may have articles that they would like to share with the Quake2, Quake3, and Tribes gaming communities. Also if there are any gamers out there who want to create a guide to a game then S.A.S would like to hear from you.

Version 1.63 of The Game Name Builder is now available for download. This version includes addons for new games as well as additional bug fixes. The Game Name Builder is a program that allows you to create custom names in most of the games available today.

Slashdot has posted an interview with id programmer John Carmack, where he answers some of the questions that people sent in. Topics range from his childhood, to his cars, to Quake (and all points inbetween). Very nifty article, and well worth a read.

To put this rumor quickly to rest, we don't have any tracks from Nine Inch Nails in the current Q3A soundtrack. Trent spent most of his time this year completing his latest album (you can still call them that, right?), and is now preparing for touring, if he's not already doing it.
As far as what is really in the soundtrack, I'm going to wait until it's finalized to go into details, but we have some great music from names many people will recognize.

Team Reaction, creators of Jailbreak, Qpong and Gloom modifications for Quake 2 (among others) are in search of a new skinner. They are looking for someone adept at being able to not only skin character models, but weapon models too. Texture and 2d work is a big plus. This position is completely voluntary. Anyone interested should submit their work to dolby@planetquake.com.

Name Maker Studio G2 v4.00 has been released. G2 (Generation 2) uses an all new advanced engine. You can now edit your name fully in a WYSIWYG enviroment instead of just displaying your name. Name Maker Studio is freeware. You can download the latest copy by clicking here.

Hey! Quake2 news isn't dead yet! There's a new single-player mission pack available, called "The Armageddon Device". Check out that site for more info, and if you dig their new mission pack, you might want to check out their old one, "Window of Retaliation". Neat eh?

y0w. Sorry about the lack of updates... there really hasn't been much of anything in my mailbox lately. Pretty dead weekend for the Quake scene I suppose. I still feel guilty when the newsletter goes out empty though :

The Clan World Network wants everyone to know that they've expanded their news coverage. They're now accepting "top of the line clan news." They'll gladly post any news as long as it's clan related, ie. about new clans, clan battles, etc. They've also added a mailbag section to their site, so be sure to check that out too!

Rocket Arena 2.25 is now available as a server-side only upgrade. This server-side upgrade features improved competition mode, new damage scoring options, and selectable arena.cfg files. Grab the latest release by clicking here.

The Gunslinger Quake2 team writes in that version 1.0 should be available within a week or so. They're planning on putting up a beta server on Wednesday, so anybody who's interested in helping them beta-test the mod, stop by their site.

Version 1.4 of Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) has been released. New features are a capturelimit, an id command, autotext, and a rock, paper, scissors game-within-a-game. Stop by their site for more info.

Those of you around New York will be glad to know that there's an upcoming LAN party in that area. It runs from November 12th thru the 14th, at the Holiday Inn, in Binghamton, NY. The registration fee is $20, email them here for more info.

So it looks like our banner-ad code is inserting some wacky javascript which is causing the whole menu problem. I think we're going to try and weed out the bad ads (ie. the javascript ones) to see if that fixes the problem.

Version 2.16 of GameSpy shareware has been released. The version for registered users has been available for a couple days, but now the public can download and take advantage of its new features. Check out their site for more info.

Been wondering what's up with the classic Jailbreak mod for Quake2? Well, LadyICE over at PlanetQuake has written up an article about the current status, and future, of Jailbreak. She's hoping this article will help "squelch the rumors that Jailbreak is dead!"

I've gotten a couple emails now about the menus popping up behind the banner ad graphic. I've gotta say, that's really weird. I've sent an email off to Blitz, our main man, to see if he can sniff out the problem. Hopefully they'll be working again soon.

Just a reminder to you all that sCary's post-Q3Test 1.09 review is up at the Shugashack. His server went down yesterday like 10 minutes after he posted it, but it's up there now for all the world to see.

FS: Many people wrote in about racing someone to a weapon and hearing the pickup, only to find that the client-side predict was off by a fraction of a second, so they actually didn't pick it up. This never happened on any other id game, and we experience it regularly even on LAN. Is this something that can be fixed?

JC: I added a "cg_predictItems 0" option if you don't want predicted pickups, but I like them when playing online.

John Carmack has updated his plan file with yet another new worklog. There's a lot of interesting new stuff in there, so be sure to check it out. The coolest thing that caught my attention definitely had to be the use of encryption on game packets.